High Altitude Homesteading

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Sunday Homestead Update

It has been summer busy around the homestead the last few weeks. When you have only a few months of warm weather in a year it means you have to cram all sorts of warm-weather-only activities into a small period of time.

We got the first load of 62 bales of hay put up. We will need another load before winter, but it feels good to be half done.

The garden is growing like crazy. We have little green tomatoes on, and tons of tomato blossoms. We should get a pretty good harvest despite the hail damage. I don’t think it will be as good as last year, but time will tell.

We are harvesting plenty of fresh salad greens for our entire family to have salad at least 4 times a week. We are eating fresh peas off the vine daily. And the currants and gooseberries are ripe so we have made some delicious syrup for our waffles from those.

The heat has been a little overwhelming (not as bad as some places in the US – but well above average for us for sure), so we are grateful for our garden drip system and plenty of water to keep everything from drying out.

The biggest project we have done lately is to paint the exterior of the house, barn, and shop. This was a BIG undertaking and took a lot of work. Thankfully, many helpful hands were available now that the kids are getting older. It feels so good to have it done. The house hadn’t been painted in over 20 years and was in very bad condition. Every summer we have lived here (4 years now) we say “we have GOT to paint,” but other things kept getting priority. This year we knew if we didn’t do it our house would begin to have major damage – we are very fortunate that it wasn’t more damaged that it already was thanks to a dry climate. So now all the buildings are protected from moisture and we don’t have to worry about painting again for several years.

We are all preparing for our upcoming County Fair. Every family member (except the baby, of course) participates in the fair. And this year two of the kids have already placed well enough in a 4-H competition to attend the State Fair and compete there. So we are all excited about that.

We are on the cusp of canning season, so I need to start preparing for that, as well as get ready for homeschool to start up again.

Welcome to Willow Creek Farm!

We are happy to have you visiting us!
I am wife to an amazing man ("Mountain Man") for 17 years now. We have been blessed with 5 children. Two girls: "Sunshine" (12) and "Little Miss" (10). And three boys: "Young Man" (14), "Braveheart" (8), and "Mr. Smiles" (1).
I enjoy being a wife and homemaker, homeschooling mom, farm girl, and helping my husband run our custom fiber processing mill.
In this blog we are sharing what we learn as we build and run our little homestead at high-altitude to provide natural, home-raised food for our family.

Come walk with us through the ups and downs of family farming in the Rocky Mountains!